Travel report Bocconi

Autumn semester 2021

Overall, my experience has been great. Even though I went there during the Covid-19 pandemic, the situation was not bad, and we were given the option to follow the classes in presence. Therefore, I was able to enjoy my experience abroad either way!

Studies

Regarding my studies, I had the following courses:

20543 SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING (Master level, 6 ects credits): 4/5
This course was about learning the programming language Python and perform some analyses with it on Twitter. It is made for people who do not have any previous coding experience. Thus, it started from the basics, and we learned to perform sentiment analysis which was very interesting! It was hard at first as it was my first time learning this, but it is definitely useful for my future to have this skill. So, it was worth it!
20674 STRATEGIC MARKETING AND ANALYTICS - MODULE 1 (Master level, 6 ects credits): 4/5
This course was very interesting! As I aim to work in marketing in the future, this provided some analytical skills that I see myself actually using with my job one day. The only negative thing was that there was this new professor in uni which was very hard to follow and she didn’t make the lectures that interesting, but I still found useful the content itself!
20765 CREATING A START UP IN THE DIGITAL AND SUSTAINABLE ECONOMY (Master level, 6 ects credits): 5/5
This course was taught by the Rector of Bocconi himself and by a famous Italian entrepreneur which was super cool! If you are interested in innovation, you must take this course because it gives you a very practical approach and perspective. Also, super cool guests came to do a lecture like the CEO of Gucci or a VP of Meta. The only negative thing (which can be positive for some) was that you don’t learn a lot of theory, thus, you are expected to know a lot about entrepreneurship before you take this course since they take many theoretical concepts for granted.
30223 MARKETING COMMUNICATION (Bachelor level, 6 ects credits): 2/5
I didn’t quite enjoy this course, it was taught by the same professor of the Strategic Marketing course and as I said she was very boring during the lectures, she would just explain the book and didn’t add anything new. But this course teaches you the basics of marketing so it can be useful if you are interested in this area.
30498 PRINCIPLES OF E-MARKETING AND E-COMMERCE (Bachelor level, 6 ects credits): 3/5
I followed this course as “non attending” which means that I studied on my own and just took the exam at the end of the semester. Thus, I can't say much about the teaching itself. The content was somewhat interesting, and it wasn’t too hard.

The course selection process was on a first come first served basis. So, this is how it went:

I got an email in July with the course catalogue and then I looked at all the courses’ descriptions and found 5 that would make up 30 ECTS total credits. You also must check yourself that the courses you want can fit in your weekly schedule. This is because it works differently at Bocconi, you have all the courses at the same time so it can happen that some lectures clash. So if you want to take all your courses as “attending”, which I recommend, then you need to see all the times of the lectures. There is a tool on the you@b website where you can insert the courses and see if they overlap. Also prepare a few extra courses in case you don’t get the ones that you want.
Once you know which courses you want, you select your courses. At the end of august, there was the selection period which lasted 3 days. I got all the courses I wanted so I suggest you do like I did. Prepare a sheet with all the course codes and at the exact time the portal opens, be ready to put all of them very fast. Because shortly after, some courses were already full.
Then after the first week of classes, you have the option to change some courses if you want. I didn’t do this so not sure how it worked.

Some tips for the courses: check how you are evaluated before choosing a course and try to not have a group project in each course because it can become a lot, especially at the end of the semester! Regarding the overall difficulty, the Bachelor’s level courses were much much simpler than the Master’s.

From my experience, the difference between the teaching at Uppsala and at Bocconi is that at Uppsala every course was very theoretical. We spent a lot of time during the first year of the Master reading scientific articles and discussing them. At Bocconi, I got the practical side. Bocconi is a prestigious business school and they really try to teach you what you will need in your job. So there were a lot of cases with companies which I appreciated!

Remember than in Italy the relationship with the professors is different: there is more formality and the professors are called with their last name.

Welcoming

The week before the beginning of classes there were some activities organized by Erasmus Bocconi which was the main organizer of events throughout the whole semester! They organized many activities such as parties, sport matches, trips etc.

Accommodation

So, Bocconi offered us the Arcobaleno residence which I didn’t take for many reasons and after my exchange I can say that it was a good decision. Basically, this residence is far from the nightlife and from the university. For me it was very important to be located close to university. It was very stressful to find something on my own so start early!! I ended up finding a studio 15 minutes walk from Bocconi, it was in the Navigli area and I paid 800 Euro per month + 100 Euro per month of service fee, so not cheap. I used Airbnb but there are many websites that offer housing for short term. Even though I speak Italian it was hard to find a place outside these websites due to the short period of the exchange. Most exchange students lived in the area from Porta Genova to Porta Romana. I recommend finding a place there so you are close to both uni and the nightlife of Navigli!

Economy

Many cities in Italy are much cheaper than Sweden, but I would say that Milan is the most expensive city in Italy (as you can also see from the accommodation costs). Groceries are cheaper than in Sweden and restaurants can vary, from 8 Euro to 16 Euro per dish. Drinks are much cheaper than Sweden in the supermarket and also in bars. CSN and the Erasmus grant were sufficient I’d say.

Leisure time

Milan is very alive. People always want to do stuff, go out, have aperitivos and enjoy the nightlife! I suggest you take a “free walking tour” of Milan during the first days so that you get an overall view of the city and the guide usually gives many spots recommendations! Another suggestion is to join a student association at Bocconi! It was great for me to join the marketing one as it was nice for the events that they organized and also for networking!